OpenAI and Anthropic Face Pricing Pressure as AI Inference Economics Remain Unclear

OpenAI and Anthropic have slashed frontier AI model prices by as much as 80% in recent months, sparking debate over whether the dramatic reductions are sustainable or echo Uber's early strategy of loss-leading to eliminate rivals. Between June and October 2026, both companies cut token pricing on flagship models including OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna and Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, with some cumulative reductions reaching 75–80%. OpenAI reduced GPT-5.6 Luna input pricing from $1 to $0.20 per million tokens and output from $6 to $1.20, while Anthropic made a temporary launch discount for Claude Sonnet 5 permanent and cut Claude Opus 5.5 pricing by 40–60%.